i think something happening in the "tech industry" right now in the US is related to the contraction of capital due to the rapidly accelerating decay of the US imperial hold. obviously a number of these subfields were just bubbles to begin with (crypto, NFTs, etc) but I also think that there are other economic-political factors at play. For example, I think that a phenomenon relevant here can be exemplified by the behavior of the job market in "web development." In 2019, I think a lot of people who "got in the door early" so to speak were able to acquire WebDev jobs relatively easily, to relatively outsized benefit, because US capital was not quite as rapidly contracting, and this was the last gush of the first guard of "tech bro" influx. So you had a lot of people saying "Dude, get a job in webdev, you just need to know HTML, CSS, JS, and a framework" and on some level these people were correct in their analysis, in a shortsighted way. But fast forward a few years, COVID-19 + the rapidly shifting global political balance re: the Chinese Century inflection point leads capital to rapidly contract in the US. and therefore, the job market is saturated with people desperate to get a lifeboat by getting a job in webdev. In response, capital begins to shut its doors more tightly, and the old wisdom of "well, you don't need to get a degree to get into CS, you can just do a bootcamp / do enough projects and build a portfolio / teach yourself with free courses online" no longer holds true, because that economic breathing-room has been consumed, and in response, capital begins to reinstate the old mechanisms of paywalling access to higher-paying careers (e.g. certifications and degrees etc).
People all over are making calculations on outdated information which informs a series of trite aphorisms about CS which are themselves in service of ideological vibes-based-analyses about bootstrapsing yourself into a high-paying tech career.
And here, with the release of the new DeepSeek model by the PRC, the death knell of the "AI" bubble has been rung, by explicitly disproving the business model that """AI""" tech companies were selling investors. Insodoing, "AI" ceases to be a print-money-for-free machine, and the subfield is going to rapidly collapse in its business influence.
This is not to say that AI will not be a relevant and important and very influential technology in years to come. It's just that, like with the railroad, the rampant speculation on the field is going to collapse, and that while it will likely become an important part of informational infrastructure, it's just that it won't happen until the technology is mature, and a mature technology is a mundane technology.
So what you have is the AI field rapidly taking on water, and people still think that you can "get a ride to the top" by "investing in a skillset around AI." Every listicle about "most in-demand CS fields / jobs" right now is still pushing "AI / Machine Learning developer" as the thing that will pay the most. It's not going to, though, and I'm calling it now that in ~five(?) years you're going to have a bunch of stranded, credulous fresh college grads and bootcamp alumni with nowhere to go with their AI tech credentials, which they were promised would get them a For Sure Job.
jacobvanloon
areudirty
andulkaphoto
origamiaround
